How long do your catfish live?

When I keep a fish I put them on a stringer and when I leave the fishin spot put them in tha car and then in the fridge when I get home. So I put one(2lb channel) in the fridge Saturday at around 7:00pm and Sunday around 8:00pm the fish was still alive. First I just find it amazing the length of time cats can hold their breath. Second how do you guys handle your keepers? What's a more humane way to handle them? I find it easiest to skin with the head and I'm not sure how to kill the fish quickly to avoid torturing them. Thanks for you input.

i was reading in this catfish book i have that catfish can actually suck oxgen into their swim blatter or something like that but they definately can suck in oxygen. so i think thats why they can stay alive for so long.

watever it is its pretty darn amazing. also anyone have any suggestions on killing the fish. i hate to have them sit around for 12 hours in the fridge. i'm thinkn a nail through the head or something. looking for a instant death. dont wanna make them suffer.

I fished with a guide at Moltrie in S.C. and we caught the first fish and he pulled out a wacking stick and thumped it a good one in head. It scared the kids and I lost it!! I told them that if they acted up in the mans boat they get the same treament!! We were just kidding but they were little angels the rest of the night!

The capton said that if fish were to be kept on ice in his boat they were going into the cooler dead! He didn't want them suffering to death on the ice.

I keep mine in the live well as long as posible and when the beverages are gone they go on ice in the cooler for the ride home and get cleaned ASAP soon after.

inhumane death to a fish :lol: sorry but God put them here and gave us domain over them .

i put them on a stringer and sometimes leave them in the floor of the boat , when i clean them i cut their throat and drop them head first in a 5 gallon bucket to bleed out takes about 25 minutes till they bleed to death , im sure its painful for the fish but what do i care im going to eat the darn thing not make friends with it :lol:

thanks for tha info guys. ka_c4_boom i guess more of what i meant was a qucker death. so cut the throat? do you soak your fish in salt water to get rid of the blood? im guessing it would take less soak time with your method of bleed to death? ugly billy thats funny

mine live long enough to get home the quicker you take care of the cleaning chores the better the feed will be my uncle showed me an extremely quick method of killing a channelcat look right between the eyes and you'll see a long indention take a fillet knife stick it in this spot and feel for the seperation in the skull wiggle it a little then remove the knife take a long broomstraw and push gently into the opening twisting as you go it'll go in a long ways but as it does all movement will stop pull out and the fish is LIMP works great on those feisty ones

Ive got a really big cooler that i just throw them in and they are dead by the time i get home. The little ones don't seen to live as long anyway and that is all i keep. I let all the big ones over 8# go back home.

I have seen guys cut the spot on the bottom of a fish where the gills come together. A pair of bolt cutters or heavy duty scissors will do. This is supposedly where a ton of blood flows to and from the gills. I assume they bleed out quickly. I usually am CPR so I don't have a ton of experience with the killing-cleaning-cooking end of it. We bow fish a ton and I keep an 18" piece of 500mcm copper wire on the boat. It is about 1" thick and weighs around 24oz. When you whack a carp in the noggin with it it practically tears their head off. Certainly keeps them from flopping all night long in the bottom of the boat. I think bats are too light to be effective. Possible a hunk of lead pipe or a ball pein hammer or something with some heft. Glad to see somebody thinks about it from the fish's point of view. Just because we have dominion doesn't mean we have to be cruel unecessarily. I'd be interested in any other ideas.

thanks for tha info guys. ka_c4_boom i guess more of what i meant was a qucker death. so cut the throat? do you soak your fish in salt water to get rid of the blood? im guessing it would take less soak time with your method of bleed to death? ugly billy thats funny

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no need to soak if you bleed them out , i used to soak them before but i never bled them back then , got to thinking that the salt wasnt that good for my health

some prefer to nail them to a tree and cut off their tail , i just do it this way cause my brother does and it works well , i keep the fish alive till time to clean so as they wont spoil

when you bleed them out the only blood is the main veign which is easily cut out you can watch them bleed out , i save their blood for chum pour it from the bucket into a zip lock bag

fish eat fish and cats dont care if its their own species or not iv cleaned flats cut their stomachs open and found flats in them aswell

I just skin mine alive, I have never had one complain yet. I hang mine from a chain out in the yard that has a meat hook attached to it, I can adjust the chain length to the size fish I am skinning , I hook them right under the bottom lip, Then I cut around the head just through the skin and take a pair of fish skinning pliers and start up at the head and pull the skin from the head toward the tail .I can skin gut and take the head off a four are five# cat in about five minutes. I have heard of people Nailing them to a tree to skin them but that looks like it would take to much time. Hey I have a question for you guy's, I had a man give me a Catfish one time that he had frozen weeks before, that had been frozen guts feathers and all. He just brought it in and stuck it in a large trash bag and put it in the freezer alive. He said they taste like they had just came out of the water if you froze them like that and don't clean them till you got ready to eat them. I took it home cleaned and eat it and it never made me sick. Has anyone ever heard of that before.
catfish slick